College Scoreboard for April 2-8

In an effort to reward meets that keep score, every week I highlight the meets among multiple D-I teams that did so. At the end I offer up new ideas and chew out the meets that should have kept score but didn’t.

Dual Meets

Pepsi Team Invitational
Seeing as how Track and Field News lumps tri- and quad-meets in with duals, I will too. This was once called the Pepsi Challenge, which fit in nicely with the late-70s/early-80s marketing campaign of the same name.

Next year, when the Pac-12 Network is up and running, the Pepsi Team Invitational will be the model for college track meets that want to get on live TV. Every team is represented in every event, every place matters, and it fits into a TV-friendly window of a few hours.Men: Oregon 204, Texas A&M 190, Washington 138, UCLA 134Women: Oregon 221.5, Washington 157, Texas A&M 149.5, UCLA 135Results | GoDucks.com story | VideoNavy 102.5, Army 100.5 (men)
Navy 116, Army 87 (women)
Not only is this one of the greatest rivalries in all of college sports, this meet had one of the best finishes you’ll ever see. The men’s score was tied going into the concluding 4×400 relay, and the crowd gathered on the infield to cheer on the runners. Navy got the win by a mere second. Among the men’s teams, the all-time series now stands at 69 wins for Army, 68 wins for Navy, and two ties.Results | GoArmySports.com story

Detroit 111, Oakland 71 (men)
Detroit 111, Oakland 77 (women)
This was the seventh annual clash for the natural rivals, the only two Division I programs in the immediate Detroit area. Oakland is located about 25 miles away in suburban Rochester Hills, best known among track fans as the home of the Hansons-Brooks distance running group.Results | DetroitTitans.com story

Illinois State 114.5, Southern Illinois 84.5 (men)
Illinois State 102, Southern Illinois 94 (women)
This was billed as the “first annual” dual meet, so hopefully the series will continue. Scoring points in the throwing events was shockingly hard for a meet between two mid-major schools. All four scorers in the women’s hammer throw will qualify to the NCAA regionals, and two (or three or possibly all four) will qualify to the national championships.Results | GoRedbirds.com story

Lehigh 112, Lafayette 91 (men)
Lehigh 116, Lafayette 87 (women)
Surprisingly, this is only the 23rd outdoor dual meet between these ancient rivals, whose football series dates from 1884.Results | LehighSports.com story

Marshall 106, Ohio University 82 (women)
SID releases can be hilarious in the way they try to make everything look good. Ohio U’s writeup on the meet said the Bobcats finished second. You have to look at the results to see that it was actually a dual meet, in which “finishing second” is usually referred to as “losing”.Results | Herdzone.com story

Dakota Double Duals
I’m not a big fan of double duals. Six simultaneous scores are not easy to follow as the meet goes along. In fact, the individual scores are too much info for me to pass along. I’ll just say who won and who lost.Men:South Dakota 2-0, South Dakota State 1-1, North Dakota 0-2Women:South Dakota 2-0, South Dakota State 1-1, North Dakota 0-2Results | USDCoyotes.com story | Video

Idaho State 83, Utah Valley 83 (men)
Idaho State 100.5, Utah Valley 83.5 (women)
Is there anything more unsatisfying than a tie? We need to figure out some kind of tiebreaker or overtime in track and field.Results | WolverineGreen.com story

Invitationals

Colonial Relays
This is what an invitational meet should be. It’s a scored affair between 32 teams, and scheduled tightly enough that the live feed ran just four hours on Friday and three hours on Saturday. I’ve listed just the top ten teams.

Miami Invitational
The highlight event of this meet was the men’s hammer throw. Top hammer thrower A.G. Kruger, who trains at Ashland University, came with the team and broke the stadium record, one held by four-time Olympian and Ashland head coach Jud Logan.

Only the top ten teams are listed below; 14 men’s teams and 18 women’s teams scored.

Chicagoland Championships
The men’s title was won by D-III North Central. Even though DePaul may have been holding back a bit, it’s remarkable that a D-III team beat three D-I teams and by so much. The meet was held at the University of Chicago’s Amos Alonzo Stagg Field, which is a “new” Stagg Field and not on the same site as the one that housed the Manhattan Project.

Meets that should have been scored, but weren’t

Duke Invitational
As I looked at the results and contemplated scoring the meet, I thought to myself that it would end up being almost a dual between Duke and North Carolina. And then I thought, why not score it that way?

A lot of big invitationals don’t lend themselves to scoring all that well, but scoring it between just two rivals would be a great subtext to the whole affair. (Provided, of course, that both bring something approaching full squads. NC State sent only a partial team to Duke, otherwise this discussion would be about a tri-meet.) The Duke Invitational might not be enough by itself to bring out a casual fan, but an opportunity to hate on North Carolina could. Another meet where this could be an effective tool would be Notre Dame’s Meyo Invitational, scoring as a dual against archrival Michigan.

South Florida Collegiate Invitational
Last week we saw a ridiculous unscored dual meet between Southern Utah and Northern Arizona. Here we have an equally ridiculous unscored tri-meet between South Florida, North Florida and Cincinnati. The results are even set up for scoring—any result beyond a team’s second best is marked as such. (The USTFCCCA’s weekly results page indicates it was scored, but no release from any of the participating teams indicates that it was). Too bad it wasn’t, because it would have been a barn-burner on the women’s side, with the home team pulling out the win on the final event.Men: Cincinnati 151, South Florida 111, North Florida 44Women: South Florida 144, Cincinnati 143, North Florida 42Results

Holy Cross and Maine at New Hampshire
Again with the non-scoring tri-meet. What gives? This isn’t T-ball, so why are we so scared to have a winning team? Scoring the simplest way (5-3-2-1, 5-3-1 for relays), this is what I get.Men: Maine 87, New Hampshire 83, Holy Cross 7Women: New Hampshire 100, Maine 78, Holy Cross 15Results

Tennessee Challenge
This is a new meet, and at times it had been referred to as the “Tennessee Team Challenge”. So I was disappointed to find out that it would not be scored. Since there were six teams, the scores below reflect 10-8-6-4-2-1 scoring.